l for his apartment-houses?"

"I guess that'll hold you for a while, George!" said Finkelstein. "I'll
tell you, though, boys, what I did hear: George's missus went into the
gents' wear department at Parcher's to buy him some collars, and before
she could give his neck-size the clerk slips her some thirteens. 'How
juh know the size?' says Mrs. Babbitt, and the clerk says, 'Men that
let their wives buy collars for 'em always wear thirteen, madam.' How's
that! That's pretty good, eh? How's that, eh? I guess that'll about fix
you, George!"

"I--I--" Babbitt sought for amiable insults in answer. He stopped,
stared at the door. Paul Riesling was coming in. Babbitt cried, "See you
later, boys," and hastened across the lobby. He was, just then, neither
the sulky child of the sleeping-porch, the domestic tyrant of the
breakfast table, the crafty money-changer of the Lyte-Purdy conference,
nor the blaring Good Fellow, the Josher and Regular Guy, of the Athletic
Club. He was an older brother to Paul Riesling, swift to defend him,
admiring him with a proud and credulous love passing the love of women.
Paul and he shook hands solemnly; they smiled as shyly as though they
had been parted three years, not three days--and they said:

"How's the old horse-thief?"

"All right, I guess. How're you, you poor shrimp?"

"I'm first-rate, you second-hand hunk o' cheese."

Reassured thus of their high fondness, Babbitt grunted, "You're a fine
guy, you are! Ten minutes late!" Riesling snapped, "Well, you're lucky
to have a chance to lunch with a gentleman!" They grinned and went into
the Neronian washroom, where a line of men bent over the bowls inset
along a prodigious slab of marble as in religious prostration before
their own images in the massy mirror. Voices thick, satisfied,
authoritative, hurtled along the marble walls, bounded from the ceiling
of lavender-bordered milky tiles, while the lords of the city, the
barons of insurance and law and fertilizers and motor tires, laid down
the law for Zenith; announced that the day was warm-indeed, indisputably
of spring; that wages were too high and the interest on mortgages too
low; that Babe Ruth, the eminent player of baseball, was a noble man;
and that "those two nuts at the Climax Vaudeville Theater this week
certainly are a slick pair of actors." Babbitt, though ordinarily his
voice was the surest and most episcopal of all, was silent. In the
presence of the slight dark reticence of